Not too long ago on twitter (follow me here and GDB here) I asked you what sort of freelance design questions bother you the most. You answered back with an array of questions and I have tried to sum them up below with some solid answers to help you move forward on your freelance journey. I chose the ten most common questions I have heard, but I know there are many more. So after reading through this list of answers

Recently, in a post titled “Defining success as a designer”, I discussed the importance of setting goals and measuring your success based on how well you achieve your goals. Then, GDB published an excellent guest article by Karol K. titled “Avoid web design stress by clearly defining site goals”. Then just yesterday I sent out an article titled “Getting your design business ‘in the groove’” in the GDB newsletter. It also hit hard on being goal-oriented as a designer. It

“You don’t know what you don’t know” – a sentence true in every situation. That’s why the majority of websites are messed up before someone even starts designing them. The main issue is that the client doesn’t know how to convey what he really wants to the designer, and the designer doesn’t know what the client wants because it wasn’t described clearly enough. Kinda stalemate. But everything could have been started so nicely and clearly with just one question. The

On the GDB facebook page, I recently asked what sorts of articles you would like to read during the next few months here at the blog. While I plan to write articles for nearly all the responses, one particular response offered by Nina Randone, really caught my attention. Her suggestion? Creative and low budget self-promotion pieces. Thus, this article was born. Today I would like to explore creative ways to promote your design business with little or no budget. Thanks,

Recently I was in on a roundtable discussion with a bunch of freelancers and we were talking about some of the similar problems we all face. One topic that kept coming up was that many freelancers have a hard time creating a healthy work/life balance. This is a problem many business owners in general have. Your business is yours and as the owner you feel that ultimately the success or failure of the entire business is on your shoulders. This

Unless you went to business school or graduated with a degree in business, chances are you weren’t taught how to write text that will bring in clients. This is typical with technical and creative arts, and is one of the main areas in which freelancers fall down. You know very well how to do the production work, but not so much on the marketing side. So how do you communicate effectively to clients to not only help them understand what

When I first started working for myself, one of the hardest things for me to do was finish a design project in the amount of time that I had anticipated. Projects that I hoped to finish in a week, took 3 weeks, those that I hoped to finish in a month, took a few months. And it wasn’t necessarily my fault. Actually, it wasn’t really the client’s fault either. The problem was, we hadn’t sat down to set milestones for

As I was reviewing a few articles here at GDB, I noticed that a trend among many readers that leave comments here at the blog is to give discounts to potential clients. In other words, when trying to rope in a first-time client, some designers prefer to give them a 10% off on your first order or something similar. Today I want to discuss the potential risks of offering design discounts and the effect that it might have on the

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